READER’S CORNER: Today, give paramedics a token of appreciation

A man is loaded into an ambulance by paramedics after two pick-up trucks collided head-on along Cole Harbour Rd. near corner of Forest Hills Parkway in Dartmouth / Cole Harbour, Thursday afternoon, April 15, 2016. Today is Medic Day in Nova Scotia.

Today is Medic Monday in Nova Scotia. Somewhere today, paramedics are comforting the family of a 90-year-old man who just died in his home. The family called 911 because they didn’t know what else to do, and while the paramedics were responding, the paramedic communications officer in the dispatch centre stayed on the phone, sharing the family’s grief and telling them what to do until the ambulance arrived.

Somewhere today, paramedics are at a scene on the roadside where there’s a dead child, and they have to keep that feeling in their gut off their faces, because they’re trying to extricate the kid’s mother — alive, injured and still trapped in the same car.

Somewhere today, a paramedic is explaining to the loved ones and family who are standing right there why they have to suction a child’s airway, or do CPR, or splint a broken limb.

And maybe, just maybe, somewhere today paramedics might get to be present at the delivery of a new life, where everything goes well and the joy in the room pushes back the gloom of other memories just enough to get them through the rest of the shift.

It’s likely the first emergency for the family, the first time they’ve ever had to call 911. The paramedics have been through it before, but just because they’ve done it a thousand times before doesn’t always make it easier. The human mind doesn’t have a delete button. Paramedics can’t unsee or forget the things they’ve seen. Off duty, they drive by the places where the accidents have been. Off duty, people ask, “What’s the worst thing you’ve ever seen?” and they relive it. They don’t get the choice not to.

Somewhere today, like every other day, on the streets, in the offices, in the bedrooms, in the basements, on construction sites, in the country, in the city, in the sunshine, after dark, in the heat, in the cold, paramedics are working to reduce pain and suffering, and maybe, just maybe, save a life.

Today, if you see any paramedics, why not give them a nod and a smile? You can even say thanks to them. After all, it’s Medic Monday.